LOVB Triangles Part 3
Transition
This week I’m sharing Triangle analysis for the 2025 LOVB Pro Women’s season. I have to squeeze this in quick, because there’s only a few days in between the end of the regular season and the beginning of the playoffs.
Part 1: Terminal Serving
Part 2: First Ball
Transition
% of Transition Rallies Won
52 - Atlanta
52 - Houston
50 - Salt Lake
50 - Austin
49 - Madison
47 - Omaha
Atlanta yet again tops the league. Interestingly enough, we don’t see any huge magnitude differences in any of the 3 categories. We generally see all 6 teams winning between 47% and 53% of the rallies in each phase. The margins are slim in volleyball, especially professional volleyball!
Transition Efficiency
0.233 - Salt Lake
0.228 - Madison
0.222 - Atlanta
0.218 - Houston
0.197 - Austin
0.183 - Omaha
Opponent Transition Efficiency
0.177 - Atlanta
0.181 - Austin
0.189 - Houston
0.222 - Salt Lake
0.260 - Omaha
0.262 - Madison
As expected, we see that a team’s effectiveness in winning transition rallies is about the differential between their efficiency and their opponent efficiency. Atlanta was 3rd in offensive efficiency, but their transition defense was the best in the league, giving them the best transition differential. Austin’s defense was strong in First Ball, and here we see it be fairly strong again here in Transition.
Let’s look at the correlations between First Ball Offense and Transition Offense:
FWIW1, the correlation was 0.27, which isn’t high. You can see on the scatter plot that Atlanta and Houston were about equally effective in First Ball and Transition. Austin and Omaha were below the trendline, which means they were relatively better in First Ball offense than Transition. Salt Lake and Madison were above the trendline, which means they were relatively better in Transition than First Ball.
Let’s look at defense.
Whoa! Now we see a near-perfect correlation. 0.95, to be exact. This means that each of the 6 teams were nearly exactly as good on defense in Transition as they were in First Ball.2
In terms of total digging, we see Atlanta and Houston at the top:
We saw blocking as a big factor in Austin’s effective First Ball defense and Digging as the factor driving Atlanta and Houston’s success in Transition. This just in: both blocking and digging are important in volleyball! You’re welcome folks, that will be $7 for your monthly subscription.
Predictions
I’m afraid I don’t have much interesting insight here. Atlanta was #1 in the regular season and they were at the top of each aspect of the Triangle. Looking objectively, I’d be foolish not to predict them to take home the LOVB championship, and I’d project Houston to face them in the finals.
If I had to make an upset pick? I’d probably go with Austin. Their point differential suggests they should be more like 7-9 instead of 5-11 and they’ve just lost three 5-setters in a row. Sure, in each individual case, the better team is more likely to win a 5-setter. But there’s a lot of luck randomness involved in 5-set matches as well and over time, most teams end up about 0.500 in those matches. So I think Austin’s record looks a little worse than their ability. I’m not sure it’s a huge upset for a 5-11 5-seed to beat a 7-9 4-seed, but that’s my bold prediction for you.
Drop your predictions in the comments. I’ll be traveling to Kansas City with my club team this weekend and following the LOVB playoffs. How about you?
Not much, in a 6-team sample
This might be a topic for future study…